In the course of September, if I can get at all stronger, I hope to get Mr. J. Jenner Weir (who has been wonderfully kind in giving me information) to pay me a visit, and I will then write for the chance of your being able to come and, I hope, bring with you Mrs. Wallace. If I could get several of you together, it would be less dull for you, for of late I have found it impossible to talk with any human being for more than half an hour, except on extraordinarily good days.—Believe me, my dear Wallace, ever yours sincerely,
CH. DARWIN.
9 St. Mark's Crescent. August 30, [1868?].
Dear Darwin,—I was very sorry to hear you had been so unwell again, and hope you will not exert yourself to write me such long letters. Darwinianism was in the ascendant at Norwich (I hope you do not dislike the word, for we really must use it), and I think it rather disgusted some of the parsons, joined with the amount of advice they received from Hooker and Huxley. The worst of it is that there are no opponents left who know anything of natural history, so that there are none of the good discussions we used to have. G.H. Lewes seems to me to be making a great mistake in the Fortnightly, advocating many distinct origins for different groups, and even, if I understand him, distinct origins for some allied groups, just as the anthropologists do who make the red man descend from the orang, the black man from the chimpanzee—or rather the Malay and orang one ancestor, the negro and chimpanzee another. Vogt told me that the Germans are all becoming converted by your last book.
I am certainly surprised that you should find so much evidence against protection having checked the acquirement of bright colour in females; but I console myself by presumptuously hoping that I can explain your facts, unless they are derived from the very groups on which I chiefly rest—birds and insects. There is nothing necessarily requiring protection in females; it is a matter of habits. There are groups in which both sexes require protection in an exactly equal degree, and others (I think) in which the male requires most protection, and I feel the greatest confidence that these will ultimately support my view, although I do not yet know the facts they may afford.
Hoping you are in better health, believe me, dear Darwin, yours faithfully,
ALFRED R. WALLACE.
9 St. Mark's Crescent, N.W. September 5, [1868?].